‘This series was made to ruin my mental health,’ someone hilariously wrote about ‘Bittersweet Love’ on X, or well, as some of us still stubbornly like to call it, Twitter.
Now, while my thoughts about the series aren’t quite as drastic, it’s definitely not an easy-breezy story to watch, with sluggish pacing and a highly Cinderella-type protagonist called Xiao Fan, who is mistreated by almost everybody in the family. Except instead of a fairy godmother, he gets a handsome brother-in-law shielding him from some of his life’s harsher realities. As a token of gratitude, Xiao Fan is constantly cooking soup for his savior.
Based on the web novel Jia Ru Gao Men De Nan Ren (嫁入高门的男人) by Che Ye Liu Xiang, ‘Bittersweet Love’ stars Guan Yue as Lu Xiao Fan, a poorly educated country boy whose parents marry him off to wealthy city girl Bei Lu Xin (Li Jue Xuan), already pregnant by someone else. It’s a marriage of convenience, and Lu Xin has no interest in him. Xiao Fan moves in with the Bei family and is offered an education and career growth in return for his sacrifice. Lu Xin’s older brother, Bei Lu Qing (Zhou Ning Jia), personally takes him under his wing and a forbidden affair eventually brews between the two.
Spanning 12 episodes, ‘Bittersweet Love’ is set in the 1990s and often leans into full-blown soap-opera melodrama, which, depending on the viewer, could either be amusingly entertaining or, as that random X user put it, drive you nuts. Xiao Fan’s parents provide plenty of that drama, constantly pressuring their son to milk his wealthy in-laws for favors, like getting a job for his older brother a job, or trying to see if they can get his younger sister married to Bei Lu Qing. They’re almost like the Ki family from Parasite: doing their best to leech off a wealthier clan.
Also Read: Kill to Love Review: Zhang Zhe Xu, Mi Jin Burn in Doomed Love
Sammy’s Children’s Day Review – A Pulpy Gangster Romance
Deep In (2026) Review: Lights, Camera, Malfunction
A lot of ‘Bittersweet Love’ feels frustrating because Xiao Fan shows very little spine until the climactic chapters and spends much of the series being a doormat or behaving like Lu Qing’s loyal lackey. In his defense, though, standing up for himself isn’t exactly easy when he has nothing to fall back on. Making soup for Lu Quing starts to seem like his coping mechanism. Don’t know what to do? Make some soup for the brother-in-law. But once he finishes college and gets a job, he does try to exercise some autonomy over his own life, going as far as asking for a divorce from Lu Xin after years of quietly staying in the sham marriage.
Right from episode one of ‘Bittersweet Love’, Guan Yue portrays Xiao Fan’s helpless, demure, pitiable ‘damsel-in-distress’ personality perfectly. However, he is also stoic and resilient, never leaving Lu Qing’s side, even when his brother-in-law’s preppy college friends try to mock or belittle him. Since Lu Qing is the only person who shows him any scrap of kindness, Xiao Fan develops a dogged loyalty and love for him.
Zhou Ning Jia, as Lu Qing, is sharp, smart, astute, emotionally unavailable and prefers men, a fact some of his close friends are well aware of. The character’s affection for his brother-in-law seems akin to developing a soft spot for a pet at the beginning, and that dynamic rarely evolves throughout the show, even though the timeline of ‘Bittersweet Love’ spans years.
The chemistry between the leads is there, but the love story is often overshadowed by needy scheming relatives. But of course it’s the loud domestic drama that keeps things entertaining, because otherwise, both Xiao Fan and Lu Qing, despite their good-looks and decent onscreen chemistry, are quite boring characters.
Actor Li Jue Xuan, who portrays the mercurial Bei Lu Xin, should’ve been given more space to show how her virtually non-existent relationship with Xiao Fan changes over the years. The climactic moments suggest that she has finally begun to soften towards her ‘husband’, but the series does so little to develop that shift that it doesn’t feel convincing at all.
In the end, ‘Bittersweet Love’ is all about Xiao Fan’s steady perseverance and ever-increasing dedication to his brother-in-law, even after he moves away from him. The last episode throws in a dramatic twist to escalate things between the lovers. But do they get a happy ending? The final few twists give viewers an exaggerated but definitive sense of closure.
Watch if you’re in the mood for some melodramatic Chinese BL with family drama, forbidden love and handsome leads.
Find the writer on Twitter | Instagram
Watch ‘Bittersweet Love’ on Viki or GagaOolala.
Read Next: ‘The Summer Hikaru Died’ Review: Grief, Gore, Ghosts (Audio Version Below)
